


The Hunger

by KestrelGirl



Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: (thanks pun brain), Body Horror, Cannibalism, Canon Rewrite, Gen, Gore, Illustrations, Mind Control, Murder, Short, This ain't a windigo chief, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:00:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21755323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KestrelGirl/pseuds/KestrelGirl
Summary: Like many people in the community, I don't like the boneskinner's lore very much. So here's my take on it - with bonus body horror, in typical me fashion. (I never thought I'd say such a thing.)
Kudos: 3





	The Hunger

The eyes are the first to go, they say.

In the inky irises of a kodan, it takes a longer time for the acid-green haze of a boneskinner to become visible. But when a norn gives in, you can tell right away by looking them in the eye.

_I see prey. All is mist now. Green. Too green._

I heard the voice as soon as I reached Jora’s Keep. Everyone heard the voice. “You are safe here,” it whispered. “Rest.” But to rest anywhere but our bunks was to give in to the cold. We norn can take much more of a chill than a human, but the marshes around us weren’t a walk in fresh powder for anyone. Even us. 

I held out for weeks, but as my companions broke, I too felt my will faltering. One month after I arrived, I used my dagger to slit the throat of one of my fellow soldiers, gravely wounded and unconscious after a patrol gone wrong. It was mercy, I told myself. But the voice told me that I was hungry for more. I volunteered to bury him. Instead, I feasted.

* * *

_The hunger never ends. It whispers for more._

One mercy kill became three, then six. I noticed things starting to… change as I hungered. Were my fingernails growing more quickly than usual? Were my cheekbones getting bigger? Or was I just losing my mind?

“Vigdis. Your eyes - didn’t they use to be brown? And your cheeks look a bit weird.” No, Anette saw it too. Something was very, very wrong.

_“They are not your allies.”_

After six weeks, no one could ignore it. Our numbers were thinning too quickly. It was my fault. Anette said there was something up with the skin of my face, though all I noticed was an old scar opening and refusing to heal. My fingers and toes were more obviously lengthening into claws. Havroun Weibe tried his best, but whatever magic had taken hold of me, it was unfamiliar to him. 

“I’m sorry,” he told me. “I can’t reverse this. I don’t know what to do but wait and see.”

_Is this Jormag? Snow Leopard? Something else? It doesn’t matter. The voice says to kill._

It is the final night of our tenth week in this Spirits-forsaken place. The whispers guide me into the forest southwest of camp. My cheeks bulge; my jaws are swelling; the skin of my face is loose and dying. Only a matter of time. When the sun rises, say the whispers in my head, I will be something new.

* * *

_Seventy days. Tonight is the night. The magic is strongest here. I look down at my hands. They are claws. My vision blurs._

_My jaws snap at air. They creak and break and bend. They push outward, and my lips hang by a scrap of skin. I will not need them. The voice in my head says all I will ever need to say. _

_The center of my skull fuses, and I gasp for air as it forces itself through my nose, creating its own nostrils. My cheekbones rupture, revealing twin knobs that grow far too quickly into spiraling tusks._

_“Free yourself. Rid yourself of this decaying prison.”_

_In an instant, my claws gouge at my scalp, down my shattered face. The withered flesh peels and tears away, but for a single lock of white hair. I am bellowing, now. But there is no pain. The cold took that long ago. Only teeth and tusk and sinew._

_My limbs splinter. The bones push their way through my skin, which toughens around the shards. My arms are longer now. My spine twists, and I am on all fours._

_All is green. All is prey. “Home, now,” says the voice. _

_“Home, child, to kill them all.”_

* * *

(Hours later.)

“Everyone’s…gone.”

“Maybe…maybe they’re on patrol.”

“The entire camp?”

“Something about this place makes my fur stand on end.”

“The barracks are in here. Should we check it out?… …Spirits. Who did this?”

* * *

I am awake. I am myself, and I am not. If anyone survived, they know my face now - my new face. I did not give in. I killed. I thrived. _Still I hunger._

All this gorging, and the voice still lingers. 

“Good, my child, my beast of bones. You are doing well. Find me more. And perhaps, one day, I will set you free.”


End file.
